Location tracking systems are employed in a variety of commercial and noncommercial contexts. For example, GNSS receivers are commonly implemented in avionic or automotive navigation systems to determine location of a moving or stationary aircraft or vehicle. A location tracking system commonly functions by determining a location relative to one or more passive or active signal sources, such as satellites, cell phone towers, Wi-Fi routers, Bluetooth beacons, IR emitters, LEDs, reflectors, and the like.
Typically, a location tracking system is capable of detecting a source or constellation of sources emitting or reflecting a common signal type. However, many modern location tracking systems can take advantage of multiple signal types by utilizing multiple channels configured to each handle a specified signal type and frequency band. For example, a multiple-channel location tracking system may include 40 channels, wherein channels 1-20 are configured to handle GPS L1 C/A signals and channels 21-40 are configured to handle Galileo E1.
It may be especially desirable to provide location tracking systems capable of processing multiple signal types in many applications where certain signal types may have superior visibility at certain times. For example, GNSS receivers employed on aircrafts may have an improved ability to capture signals of a certain signal type from one or more sources (e.g. GPS L1) at a certain time and an improved ability to capture signals of a different signal type from one or more sources (e.g. Galileo E1) at a different time. Therefore, a GNSS receiver capable of detecting multiple signal types may improve accuracy of the determined location at any given time.
The current multiple-channel approaches for implementing multiple-constellation, multiple-frequency receivers are limited by the need to include fixed channels for each signal type. Accordingly, the current multiple-channel location tracking systems do not offer flexibility to freely allocate channels to signal types in a manner that may enhance location tracking capabilities and increase system efficiency. Including more channels to track multiple signal types also tends to require additional time and/or processing power for monitoring the additional channels to extract tracking data that can be utilized to determine a location.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide location tracking systems capable of tracking multiple signal types without the foregoing limitations.